We have 18 mangoes(dot mai),from 3 to 5 years old.Locals seem reluctant to give advice,which is fair enough i guess

How and when should pruning be done,it seems to me there is excessive growth this rainy season?

Are there any recommended sprays/in particular to deal with the black flying bugs that feast on the young flowers

Also recommended fertaliser programme would be of assistance. Thank you

Nam Doc Mai mangoes. Which ones do you have? There are at least two a larger tree (original one I think) and a dwarf NDM #4. The #4 has a habit of splitting with too much nitrogen.

We have 18 mangoes(dot mai),from 3 to 5 years old.Locals seem reluctant to give advice,which is fair enough i guess

How and when should pruning be done,it seems to me there is excessive growth this rainy season?

Are there any recommended sprays/in particular to deal with the black flying bugs that feast on the young flowers

Also recommended fertaliser programme would be of assistance. Thank you

Pruning.... after the fruit has been harvested, give it a month or two when the plants go dormant, i.e. winter.. The general rule is to cut any branches that are growing up or inwards as they will not fruit. Keep the horizontal branches.

Generally speaking mangoes are a fruit that grows on the external part of the trees. Keeping the inside of the canopy clear helps with air circulation and the reduction of pests. There are many ways to spray for pests but this will depend on where you are and the pests involved.

I have a few (60) trees and initially sprayed them for mango weevil which bores into the wood and causes the branches to break off over time. The spray is very toxic and I stopped using it. I now use the weevils as a natural pruning mechanism. If you aren't growing them commercially, and the trees are established, the best advice is to just prune them in winter and let nature take care of itself. Fertiliser again will depend on the soil they are growing in.

You could get a soil test done to determine the nutrient deficiencies and apply fertiliser to suit.

Don't worry about the growth this rainy season...the bigger the better in terms of fruit production.

We also have quite a few nam dok mai trees, and a few other kinds. Basically we just let the red ants care for them, they keep away most pests, although it has its drawbacks if you brush up against a limb. The only pruning we do is slashing away the jungle that grows up around them, and the limbs that get in the way of walking. They produce buckets and buckets of fruit every year without help -- the exception being this year when we were hit by what I believe was fruitfly. Noticed it too late to do anything about it. Very few mangos from those particular trees.

When those weevils get on the trees they lay eggs that turn into grubs then the grubs eat

their hearts content on the tasty wood of the branches causing them to eventually die.

If you have dead branches cut them off before the trunk and look for holes in the wood

that's surrounded by brown stuff (grub poop) if those holes enter the trunk the tree will

eventually die.

When the fruit grows to a fair size wrap each fruit in newspaper; this helps to keep egg

laying insects off the fruit then pick when ready.

For fertilizer I use old fish guts (cheap or free) and homemade compost. It works.

For insecticide I go to a local hardware store and do my best to explain what I need.

They understand and sell me a couple bottles of the stuff with a warning...When the

tree begins to bear fruit...stop spraying for bugs. And wrap the fruit as I mentioned

earlier.

Here's some further reading...just copy & paste...

http://www.webcrawler.com/info.wbcrwl.305.07/search/web?q=when+to+prune+mango+trees&cid=139569998&ad.network=g&ad.keyword=when%20to%20prune%20mango%20trees&ad.creative=25902259958&ad.position=1t1&ad.placement=&ad.matchtype=b&ad.aceid=&ad.ismobile=&ad.device=c&ad.devicemodel=&ad.segment=info.wbcrwl.305.07

http://www.burkesbackyard.com.au/factsheets/Food-Health-and-Nutrition/2UE-mango-growing-tips-and-recipes/6027

http://homeguides.sfgate.com/guidelines-mango-tree-care-54609.html

http://www.virtualherbarium.org/tropicalfruit/MangoTreeCare.html

There's more stuff out there...including a great recipe for Mango Ice Cream!

Hope this helps you...I have 30 trees doing fine at the moment. Still learning too.

If it rains between flowering and formation of fruit, cultivated varieties tend to lose a lot of fruit. That may be one reason that you lost yield. The Thais generally plant different varieties (early, late..) as well as the wild varieties. The wild one we have always yields well, has a nice straight trunk unlike the cultivars.

I would prune as little as possible, you'll likely get too much non flowering growth as a response. Best to just use secateurs from young.

I started planting 1-1.5 meter high trees before the rainy season. I spaced each tree around 10 m. from each other. I recently watched a video of a mango nursery where they will let the trees grow about 2 to 3 m high and then they prune the trees.

The trees don't produce as many mangoes as a larger tree, but its easier to harvest the mangoes and you can have more trees in an area. I don't know which scenario would produce the greater yield per rai.

Those of you who are growing mangoes, do you also grow other trees between your mango trees?

Try this for pruning

https://www.google.com.au/?gws_rd=cr#gs_rn=23&gs_ri=psy-ab&tok=WGo256l2s_wF6a2ER-CK5g&cp=12&gs_id=1a&xhr=t&q=pruning+mango+trees&es_nrs=true&pf=p&output=search&sclient=psy-ab&oq=pruning+mang&gs_l=&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_cp.r_qf.&bvm=bv.50165853,d.dGI&fp=7a397f610fd8c739&biw=1366&bih=667

I have mangoes in my garden and in my farm. They get treated different because in the garden I want them to look nice so I cut them to look good just after fruiting. I have cut a tree that was 9 years old with the lowest branches as high as I could reach down to below head height. My gardener told me it would die for sure but looking at it now just four months later its full of branches and I expect to get fruit this year. On the farm I would never cut so drastic but after the first year I cut all to waist height. If I had to do over again I would have cut to knee height. Shorter trees make harvesting easier and while the yield per tree may be a bit lower the yield per land size is much better. More small trees is how almost all fruit trees are being planted now.